The threat of forgery of identity documents is growing at an astounding rate. In the past, only skilled professionals with sophisticated equipment were capable of counterfeiting passports, driver's licenses, identification cards and financial instruments. Today however, the counterfeiting threat for this wide array identity documents has moved from the professional counterfeiter to the amateur. Sophisticated counterfeiting tools such as scanners, card printers, and image editing software are readily available, and identity document attacks by both criminal and casual counterfeiters are a growing threat.
For government-issued citizen identity documents, this counterfeiting and forgery threatens personal, corporate and national security. Reliably confirming the authenticity of an identity document is therefore of critical importance.
In recognition of this, a number of states have adopted digital watermarks—covert digital security features—that transform multiple, previously passive elements of driver licenses, such as photo and artwork, into machine-readable elements. (See, e.g., Digimarc Corporation, Are Your IDs Secure Enough?, February 2005, www.digimarc.com/docs)
A digital watermark enhances the security of identity documents by embedding virtually imperceptible digital information within each document. It can, for example, confirm the date of birth on a driver's license; identify an altered passport; or verify the authenticity of a security badge. When applied as a covert layer of security to identity documents such as driver licenses, digital watermarks enable machine-readable authentication of identification documents.